


Add some sugar to your coffee (so it tastes a little sweeter)

by Anonymous



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Not Hockey Player(s), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 01:59:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15281100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Then he fucking winks and walks off, like he hasn’t screwed Thomas’s weekend plans to hell. Thomas shoves his textbook in his bag then gets in line because if he’s going to figure out what the hell just happened, a) he’s not doing it in a coffee shop when he can do it at home in fuzzy socks and b) he wants good fucking coffee while he explores his options and neither he nor his roomate can make coffee for shit.PL doesn’t even ask what Thomas wants, just smiles and says, “Don’t worry about ordering anything, I’ve got you covered.”Thomas gets handed a brownie and too-sugary coffee, neither of which he has to pay for. Tito called it the “Barzy Special” at the counter, so Thomas thinks about better names for the drink, it’s given name being rather uninspired. He does not devote thought to how many people must have suffered Barzy’s disarming personality before a drink was made to be given to them.





	Add some sugar to your coffee (so it tastes a little sweeter)

**Author's Note:**

> This one is unofficially subtitled 'the bane of my existence since march'. If you want a list of the minor/background characters and relationships, go to the bottom. Both will be listed there.

Thomas was sceptical at first, but he has to give this to his roommate: people watching is the shit. Wonderful way to unwind, especially when he can’t afford to watch shitty romcoms. The coffee shop he goes to has slow days, which are good for his grades if nothing else but Wednesdays and weekends usually yield something interesting. Mostly because that’s when a lot of the regulars come through.

Eyebrows -- Thomas doesn’t know his name, and his eyebrows are something of a selling point -- comes in on Wednesdays, Fridays, and weekends, and he flirts a lot. Thomas does not take issue with that, not in the slightest, but other people -- the late shift barista’s boyfriend -- like it a little less. And like, Thomas gets where the boyfriend is coming from: the late shift barista -- his nametag said Nater -- has dimples when he smiles, which is always, so he always has these killer dimples on this face and he’s always laughing and making jokes, and he doesn’t screw up Thomas’s coffee, so Thomas understands, if nothing else. Nater’s super obviously in love with his boy though, so the boyfriend has nothing to worry about. 

The boyfriend comes in towards the end of Nater’s shifts, but sometimes he comes in in the morning with Raccoon Boy. Raccoon Boy also works at Seven-Eleven, but Thomas has never seen his name tag, though that might just be 3am brain fog. Regardless, Thomas doesn’t know his actual name, but ‘Raccoon Boy’ is what Mitch called him the one time Thomas was in the coffee shop around seven -- for coffee instead of free drama for once in his life -- so that’s what he calls him.

Mitch is the early shift barista and people like him. Julien said he tries to get shifts with Mitch because the tips are better, and PL laughed at him but didn’t deny it when Julien accused him of doing the same thing. He did try to kiss Julien to distraction though, so Thomas figures Julien knows what he’s talking about. 

Mitch talks to Thomas sometimes, even though they don’t really know each other. He’s wearing a Leafs hat today and is chattering endlessly about the Leafs’ season when he could be making Thomas’s coffee efficiently. Yes, Thomas knows they made the playoffs. He does live in the GTA. Yes, his is aware of how great the Toronto Maple Leafs have been these past couple seasons. No, he didn’t know Mitch got to watch them live the other day, right up against the glass. Good for him, that must have cost him both kidneys and his heart. Oh it didn’t? That’s great, whose organs did he sell? 

Eventually, he actually gets Thomas his coffee, though he thinks that’s mostly because the person behind him is wearing Leafs gear. He has his coffee, though, so he finds himself a corner, sets a textbook in front of himself and tries to be productive. It almost works for two whole minutes. 

Someone starts talking to him, even though he’s clearly preoccupied, and he means to tell them to fuck off when he turns to face them, except Eyebrows is the person and he is gorgeous. Like, there’s seeing someone from afar and thinking, ‘hey his hair is nice’ and then there’s seeing it and wanting to run his fingers through it, which, what the hell. Thomas is an actual adult, he freaks out about taxes when they’re due every year, just as every other adult on this earth does, he needs to get his shit together and not think about biting his mouth. _He needs to stop thinking about biting a stranger’s mouth._

Eyebrows is still going on about- a shelter? Yeah, an animal shelter. He’s got a sheet of paper in his hand that he foists onto Thomas that cements the animal shelter as his topic and which invites Thomas to volunteer. 

“Can I expect to see you there?” He asks. 

The flyer says playing with the puppies counts as volunteer work and Thomas doesn’t go out ever, so he’ll be able to find the time. “Yeah.” 

“Sweet! You can call and set up a time, but they’ll take walk-ins, too. Tell ‘em Mat sent you.” 

Then he fucking winks and walks off, like he hasn’t screwed Thomas’s weekend plans to hell. Thomas shoves his textbook in his bag then gets in line because if he’s going to figure out what the hell just happened, a) he’s not doing it in a coffee shop when he can do it at home in fuzzy socks and b) he wants good fucking coffee while he explores his options and neither he nor his roomate can make coffee for shit. 

PL doesn’t even ask what Thomas wants, just smiles and says, “Don’t worry about ordering anything, I’ve got you covered.” 

Thomas gets handed a brownie and too-sugary coffee, neither of which he has to pay for. Tito called it the “Barzy Special” at the counter, so Thomas thinks about better names for the drink, it’s given name being rather uninspired. He does not devote thought to how many people must have suffered Barzy’s disarming personality before a drink was made to be given to them. 

 

He keeps visiting the shelter after the event Mat advertised. He can take dogs out and walk them around, which is awesome, and he’s become quite enamored with one german shepherd mutt named Daphne. She’s three and still has floppy ears and he’d totally adopt her, except his apartment doesn’t allow pets, so he’s decided to visit the shelter a whole awful lot and hold her in his arms when he can. It’s his daily saving grace. 

Mat probably has an internship there; he comes in at shift-like intervals and gets the animals that require the help of people that have gone to classes for that sort of thing. The predictability makes him easier to avoid, but he also keeps talking to Thomas about specific animals when they see each other at the coffee shop which is endearing and thus something Thomas doesn’t need from him. Mat doesn’t try to talk to him a lot, though. Mostly he flirts with PL -- Julien doesn’t mind -- or with Nater -- his boyfriend is increasingly incensed about it -- and Thomas can watch without interruption or incident from his usual corner table. 

 

The first time he saw Racoon Boy -- a rare daylight sighting in the coffee shop -- Thomas watched him hit his head against the table -- full-on head on the table, lifted his head, let it drop the the table, wash rinse repeat -- presumably out of frustration. Nater’s boyfriend, who was across the table from him at the time, hadn’t done much to stop it. 

Racoon Boy doesn’t look to be in a much better state of mind nowadays. He’s the talkative type of cashier, so Thomas has been unfortunate enough to hear about Racoon Boy’s maybe-ex-best friend, how he’s tearing it up in Edmonton (which is debatable, really, as the only people who’ve ever ‘torn it up’ in Edmonton are Gretzky and maybe McDavid) and how abandoned and unloved Racoon Boy feels about all this. It’s been a couple weeks, so now’s an odd time to get frustrated by it, but Thomas just wants his ramen. He doesn’t need to be held up by this, it doesn’t need to keep him up at night. Besides, Racoon Boy might do something productive, now. Like talk to his bestie or fucking sleep. He looks like an exhumed corpse.

“Talk to him, okay? Call him up and tell him you fucking miss him or something. If you can’t be honest about your feelings with your best friend and there’s enough spillover that you need to complain to a stranger at two in the fucking morning, something’s really fucking wrong.” Racoon Boy gapes at him like a fish, so Thomas rolls his eyes and grabs the plastic bag out of his hands. “Get some fucking sleep, Racoon Boy.” 

Then he goes home, makes his convenience store ramen, and does not sleep for a long fucking time. 

 

He’s playing with Daphne, scratching behind her cute, floppy ears when Nater’s boyfriend comes into the room holding a kitten. He is closely followed by Mat, who’s calling him Mikey and doing hand gesture things. 

Mikey does not look happy with him, or maybe just isn’t happy with anything. He’s got hella intense eyebrows, and they look all expressive and shit around Nater, but right now they’re drawn into a hard line, and Mikey’s frowning, which is wrong on a fundamental level. No one should be frowning when holding a ten month old cat to their chest. 

Neither of them seem to be having a good time of it. Mikey’s head rolls back, like the ceiling might give him some answers, and then he puts the kitten back into her kennel and stalks over to Thomas, which- no. No thank you.

“Hey, you’re at the coffee shop a lot, right?” Mikey asks him. His voice is quiet. It’s not soft anymore, just cold and flat. Mat comes up behind Mikey and says, “He’ll agree with me!”

Thomas looks at the two of them, nods and hums an affirmative, and keeps giving Daphne ear scritches.

“Okay, tell Barzy he’s not got his head on straight.” Mikey says.

Mat shoots a glare at Mikey, then looks back to Thomas and says, “Mikey thinks Nater isn’t into him.”

Which implies that either Mikey and Nate aren’t dating, or they are and the spark has gone out or something, neither of which make any sense: these fuckers share clothes; Nater spends his two free-because-you’re-an-employee coffees on Mikey; they go on dates together, which Thomas knows because Nater will endlessly rhapsodize about Mikey’s wonderful taste in movies and hockey teams. If they’re not dating, Thomas might have a conniption. 

“Are they not dating?” Thomas asks, because that seems most direct. Mat’s head snaps to stare Mikey into oblivion and his hands do an ‘I told you so’ thing while Mikey does little more than shove his face into his hands and moan. “Wait, seriously? What about the Steelheads game you guys went to on Wednesday?”

Mikey drags his hands up his face until they’re clenched in his hair. “That wasn’t a date,” he goes. “How do you know about that, anyway?”

“Nater fucking told me, dumbass,” Thomas says. “I was just trying to get a fucking coffee and he kept going on about how fun the game was, how great it was to spend time with you, how amazing you are. Are you guys really not together in, like, any capacity?”

“They’re not!” Mat says, and he sounds appalled. 

“Why?” Thomas looks straight at Mikey, who’s now toying with his shirtsleeve and staring at the floor.

“He’s not interested!” Mikey says, and Thomas fucking snorts, because that’s just dumb, and it doesn’t deserve any sort of charity on his part. 

“He gives you free coffee.” Thomas says. 

“He’s an employee. He gets as much free coffee as he likes.” Mikey says. 

“Actually, employees only get two free cups of coffee,” Mat corrects. “Ask Mitch or Tito or anyone else that works there.” 

Mikey looks up at that, jerks his eyes from the floor tiles and lands them on Mat. Mikey searches his face like he’s trying to see if Mat’s lying or something. Like Mat even would.

Finally his eyebrows raise into his hairline and he goes ‘oh my god’ and gets the fuck out, full-on sprints out of the room and Mat follows after him, so Thomas can only assume Mikey’s off to declare his love or something and maybe possessive-fuck Nater into the earth’s crust for all the times he’s wanted to before now. 

Thomas runs a hand along Daphne’s side, pats her on the ribs. She shouldn’t have had to suffer that. 

 

Given Mikey’s idiocy, he’s concerned that he might need to stage an intervention or something if he and Nater stil aren’t dating, but when he drops into the coffee shop the next day, they’re bicker-flirting, and it’s the most disgusting thing Thomas has ever seen with his own two eyes, which is pretty rude since he’s also had to watch Racoon Boy try and grow a beard. 

He sits down at his corner table and doesn’t start studying immediately. It’s freezing out and he wants to hold his coffee for a bit before he tries to hold his book and learn by osmosis or read it the good old fashioned way. 

Someone taps him on the shoulder and he flinches hard enough that he’d have spilled his coffee if he’d gotten around to taking the lid off. He looks over, and Mat’s there, trying to hold in his laughter. 

“Why would you do that,” Thomas says.

Mat smiles at him (fuck you, Mat) and runs a hand through his hair (double fuck you) and Mat’s arms are amazing, his hair is to die for, and it takes a lot of self control to wrench his eyes away from that and look Mat in the face, but Mat is still smiling at him, so that only does so much good. 

“Are you free tonight?” Mat asks.

“Wait, what?” Thomas asks, because he’s a complete fucking idiot, what the hell.

“Are you free tonight?”

“Yeah, why?” Maybe the shelter needs someone last minute? He’d know if there was an event or something. 

“No, I was just wondering if you’d like to go to dinner with me. Tonight.” 

Mat’s leaning on the wall, fidgeting with his hair. He’s nervous. Thomas decides it’s cute, then quickly agrees. Mat sits and gets a time and place hashed out, then starts talking about a litter of kittens someone brought in the other day and Thomas is, once again, endeared. 

He’s excited.

**Author's Note:**

> Minor/Background Relationships: Mikey McLeod/Nathan Bastian, Pierre-Luc Dubois/Julien Gauthier  
> Minor/Background Characters: Mikey McLeod, Nathan Bastian, Pierre-Luc Dubois, Julien Gauthier, Anthony Beauvillier, Mitch Marner, Dylan Strome, Connor McDavid is mentioned
> 
> I needed more Mat/Chabby stuff I guess. Feedback and comments give me emotional strength? so if you notice anything/have anything to say I'm always here for it.


End file.
